And thats ultimately the problem with reparations arguments that are not based upon the people causing the harm paying the people directly harmed by specific conduct soon after the conduct is remedied.

As Coates explained his views to Melissa-Harris Perry this morning, it became clear that there is no sense at all of holding the guilty accountable in the sense we normally do, or compensating actual victims.

There is a complete disconnect between cause and effect  anyone with a particular skin color is presumed to be a victim of policies even from generations earlier. Its a simplistic and non-evidentiary approach which generalizes anecdotes and ignores the myriad of factors that influence success or failure in life.

Rather, this is a societal redistribution, in which the not actually guilty pay, and the not actually injured get compensated, via the power of government to redistribute wealth.

Its just redistribution with a different justification.

That Coates so easily acceded to Harris-Perrys suggestion that women fit Coates reparations narrative too, reflects the impossibility of the reparations agenda. The same answer would apply to numerous other groups as well.

And so the true reparations absurdity is revealed.

A vast majority of the country is owed reparations, but also has to pay reparations. Its just a shuffling of money.

The only way to do this is, as Ezra Klein suggests, just have the Treasury print more money and give it to people.

Sounds like the Democratic Party Platform.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate reflects this redistributionist attitute, common among supporters of Coates article. Use the government to take and to give on a massive scale. Also known as Tax and Spend:

Instead of cash, the federal government would implement an agenda to tackle racial inequality at its roots. This agenda would focus on major areas of concern: housing, criminal justice, education, and income inequality. As for the policies themselves, they dont require a ton of imagination. To break the ghettos and reduce the hyper-segregation of black life, the federal government would aggressively enforce the Fair Housing Act, with attacks on housing and lending discrimination, and punishment for communities that exclude low-income residents with exclusionary zoning.

Whats more, it would provide vouchers for those who want to move, subsidized mortgages for those who want to own, and huge investments in transportation infrastructure, to break urban and rural isolation and connect low-income blacks to jobs in wealthier, whiter areas .

Havent we been doing most of that for the past 50+ years. Hows it working out?

It think the redistribution agenda explains a lot of why the reaction to Coates article are so over the top from liberal writers and pundits.

Reparations to African-Americans have been a topic of discussion for decades, and using analysis similar to that of Coates, but the reaction to Coates article is that he has come upon something new.

So why this reaction now?

Redistribution is the theme of 2014 and 2016 for Democrats. Even if Thomas Pikketys writings are on shaky grounds now, the war on the wealth and income gap will survive into the election season. But its a hard argument to make simply based on wealth and income redistribution as such.

Reparations, or at least a discussion of reparations, fits the narrative.

Whatever we have, was gained unfairly. Whoever doesnt have was cheated.

The entire system is rigged.

You didnt build that on your own.

Even though the discussion will go absolutely nowhere, its a discussion Democrats are happy to have.

That is the whole point of the new “White privilege” meme. It doesn’t matter if your great, great granddaddy owned slaves or not. It doesn’t matter if your grandparents immigrated here in the last century. What matters is that you are White and therefore implicitly benefit from a legacy of racism against the Black man. So, you need to be made to pay.

In a way, it’s genius because it “solves” so many problems inherent with asking for reparations. Of course, the one problem it doesn’t solve is the Civil War it will start if it’s ever implemented. People, like me, who followed the law their whole lives will instantly become criminals when we fight back.

I would support reparations on the condition that the recipients leave. After all the case being made is that life in America is unbearable for African -Americans. The recipients should be given enough money to set themselves in the African country of their choice (or that will take them).

We could pay for at least some of this with a tax on wealthy African-Americans These wealthy African-Americans, unlike the rest, have benefited greatly by being in the United States. They should be glad to help out their less fortunate brethren; they might decide to forgo reparations, remain in the United States, and accept their acquired wealth as ‘account paid in full.’

The excess expense above the amount raised by the wealth-tax described above would compensated by the 50 percent fall in violent crime, 40 percent reduction in the welfare case-load, and end to massive expenditures to close ‘education gaps.’ I would consider all of these previous wealth redistributions to African-Americans as a sunk cost, and would not seek to recover them from any reparations paid.

The United States might never win another world sprinting competition but for most sports we could probably get by (Teams of White men once competed in basketball). White people have created (and do create) popular music and entertainment, so I am sure we could do so in the future. I also imagine that Cadillac dealers and gold jewelry sellers could find new customers. Indeed with resources freed up from criminal justice, food-stamps, and education we might have more wealth ‘to spread around.’

So yes, I support reparations for African-Americans even Ta-Nehisi Coates, if he would have the guts to accept them under the rules outlined.

The idea of reparations is just another black race pimp scam to raid the treasury.

Any white stupid enough to fall for the “White Privlege” hoax or to develop a case of white guilt for any other reason is too gullible and foolish to be taken seriously and should not be allowed to vote or have contact with innocent children.

With little barry basatrd boy regime in power and in peril of being exposed as their feckless selves, it is more than a treasury raiding scam, it is a way to incite hatred between races. This regime wants a race war so bad they can taste it. It is the only means they have to declare the Constitution suspended and full-out fascist rule without collapsing the economy and losing all control.

“The reparations thing is floated as a cover for redistribution which is going on now.”

You’re right; nobody actually believes cash will be given to the great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves, but the perceived threat of such re-distribution is to silence the discussion about the legal problems with the de facto reparations that have been going on for decades (via affirmative action).

Dave Chapelle had a great skit about what would happen if blacks received reparations; absolutely hysterical.

We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:

Whereas in the early 1600s 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,

Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,

Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,

Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,

Whereas the Democratic party has used racist demagoguery to deceive African Americans about the history of the Republican Party that: (a) started as the anti-slavery party in 1854, (b) fought to free African Americans from slavery, (c) designed Reconstruction, a ten-year period of unprecedented political power for African Americans, (d) passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, (e) passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting African Americans protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, (f) passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 granting African Americans protection from the Jim Crow laws, (g) established Affirmative Action programs to help African Americans proper with Republican President Richard Nixons 1969 Philadelphia Plan that set the first goals and timetables and his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act that made Affirmative Action Programs the law of our nation, and (h) never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the death of millions of African Americans,

Whereas Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (a 1954 decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) was a landmark civil rights case that was designed to overturn the racist practices that were established by the Democratic Party,

Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy authorized the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to investigate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on suspicion of being a communist,

Whereas Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, made a 14-hour filibuster speech in the Senate in June 1964 in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded in April 2004 by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd as a senator who would have been a great leader during the Civil War,

Whereas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act came up for vote, Senator Al Gore, Sr. and the rest of the Southern Democrats voted against the bill,

Whereas in the House of Representatives only 61 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as compared to 80 percent of Republicans, and in the Senate only 69 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared to 82 percent of the Republicans,

Whereas Democratic President Bill Clinton sent troops to Europe to protect the citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo while allowing an estimated 800,000 black Rwandans to be massacred in Africa, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan,

Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was stolen from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the Miami Herald and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,

Whereas the Democratic Partys soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,

Whereas the Democratic Partys use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Partys heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,

Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.

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